“Are you two finished?”
Thus did one of Tavern on the Green’s swarming floor crew growl at us the other night. It was one of numerous nasty moments at the re-launched Central Park landmark since I wrote about its new look and menu after it opened in mid-April.
Back then, I praised its food as better than its wretched predecessor’s. But how could it not be?
Six weeks later, Tavern on the Green is a very different, and much more crowded, place. The al fresco dining courtyard is open, garlanded with pretty, twinkling white bulbs — a sweet spot on a balmy afternoon or evening. Unlike at its topiary-barricaded predecessor, the new Tavern’s patio affords sweet views of horses, the Sheep Meadow and Central Park West.
But while some “farm-driven” American dishes from executive chef Katy Sparks’ flame- and smoke-spewing open kitchen are tasting as good as when I first tried them, others wander out of the park.
Dry, funky bluefish pâté in a jar, anyone? In a city of eater-friendly, breast-trimmed quail, Tavern’s little birds, served whole, challenge the most intrepid bone-pickers to extract a molecule
of meat.
I can live with precious hearth, grill and plancha menu categories. More serious confusion lies on plates, which are heaped with enough leaves, grains, vegetables, fungi, slaws and spuds for a Whole Foods truck to have flipped on the table.
I enjoyed saffron-scented, spring wild mushroom soup, Maine Bouchot mussels in tingling red chili broth and Faroe Island salmon with cumin carrot puree and horseradish creme fraiche. They revealed Sparks’ eclectic way with strong raw materials and bold flavor interplay at its unaffected best.
But the kitchen serving hundreds at a time veers off track. Meat was overcooked: dry beef brisket and rubbery, plancha-cooked pork chop faded after the first few nibbles. “Caramelized” anchovies lay on the tongue like cardboard. Most every plate came with one element too cold for the others.
Incidentals lurch from fussy to tacky: While evening bread came with labne or feta cheese spread, lunchtime butter took the form of ice-cold, foil-wrapped patties.
The design’s as schizo as the menu. The clean-lined, white-on-beige “Central Park Room” is a more fun place to sit now that its floor-to-ceiling glass wall gazes into the lit and lively courtyard.
Yet its airy cheer makes the dimly lit, peak-roofed “South Wing” — a retread of an annex previously used for parties and holiday-crowd overflow — seem dingier. So cramped that waiters slam you when they pass, it’s a must to avoid.
Wherever you sit, there’s little sense of occasion even when the odd table bursts into a boozy “Happy Birthday.” For all its faults and decay, the LeRoy family’s Tavern always felt like a celebration even if it was someone else’s. Without large, festive gatherings and live music, now limited under city rules, the place feels like a party ship in search of a party.
And service drifts out to sea. A request for tomato juice brought forth an intolerably chili-spiked elixir in which mystery items were suspended. “That’s like our tomato juice,” the waiter apologized.
At least desserts have joined the real world. They took my advice to “lose red velvet cake made with beets.” Now, “single-origin” chocolate mousse is just dandy. Asked to explain the name, our waiter spun a tale of the Dominican Republic, Brooklyn and “a finishing note like wine.”
It’s a happier ending than exit door signs which strangely read, “This is not an exit” — the last line from “American Psycho.”
Tavern on the Green deserves a better story.